Various types of mobile networks are configured to provide Internet Protocol (IP) session continuity for mobile devices to guarantee session continuity of each IP session, for example, when a mobile device moves from one network to another, e.g., as a result of a radio link handoff. For example, a source IP address of the mobile device may change, when the mobile devices moves between networks, for example, as a result of a change in a network prefix portion of the source IP address. As a result of the change in the source IP address of the mobile device, packets, which carry the old IP address, e.g., packets generated by network nodes, which are unaware of the change in the source IP address, will not reach the mobile device.
Common solutions for guarantying the IP session continuity include, for example, the Mobile Internet Protocol (MIP) and Proxy MIP (PMIP) schemes defined by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), and the General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) Tunneling Protocol (GTP) defined by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP).
These solutions rely on a network agent, which allocates to the mobile device a source IP address, which remains unchanged throughout a session. The network agent keeps track of the location of the mobile device, and creates for the mobile device a temporary care-of address, which changes whenever the mobile device moves from one network to another. The network agent forwards packets to and from the mobile device by creating special tunnels that override standard routing schemes.
However, these solutions for guarantying the IP session continuity consume network resources, as they require a signaling scheme to keep track of the location of the mobile device, and performing encapsulation/decapsulation of packets through a tunneling process, which in turn requires processing power and generates overhead information to be transmitted for each packet. Additionally, the tunneling process induces delays in the communication of the packets and, as a result, a Quality of Experience (QoE) of real-time applications, e.g., interactive video conferencing and/or video sharing, may be degraded.